Fine Art student selected for prestigious Venice Fellowships Programme

Final year student Catherine Masters will spend a month researching and stewarding at the Venice Biennale on this British Council partnership programme

Renie in the Fine Art studios

Renie Masters, a student in her final year of our BA (Hons) Fine Art course, has beaten strong competition to be selected as one of around 60 art and design students to take part in the 2019 Venice Fellowships Programme. As a partnership between the British Council and La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) which launched in 2014, the selected students gain an exclusive opportunity to spend a month in Venice during the renowned Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most significant exhibitions of art and architecture which takes over the city from 11 May to 24 November 2019.

The students split their time between invigilating at the British Pavilion exhibition – this year represented by artist Cathy Wilkes - and conducting independent research, which is guided by the focus of the biennale and the exhibition. They choose one of several core themes, which are investigated through site-specific and archival research focused either on the biennale or within Venice itself.

Renie will spend the month of August on the fellowship. Her practice deals with themes including notions of place, patterns, colour and the overlooked. Her research proposal will see her exploring sections of Venice, photographing, collecting objects and listing different words. She will then make studies of the patterns, shapes and colours she finds to produce fragments of place. She envisages the work culminating in an abstract representation or map of her wanderings.

Renie told us: “I feel incredibly lucky to have been offered this position and it’s something so exciting to look forward to after I graduate. Meeting the other fellows I’ll be sharing my time in Venice with was great and has got me super excited to go.”

She added: “Being offered the position has really proved to me that there’s nothing to lose by applying for things, even if you don’t think you’ll get them. There are lots of opportunities either provided or signposted by NTU to put yourself out there for.”

Find out more about the Venice Fellowships Programme on their website.